Being relatively young regions, economic integration of youth is a defining challenge across the Western Balkans and Central Asian regions, but policy priorities have not aligned yet in a consistent way around entrepreneurship and the post-education age cohorts. Integrating young people into the labor market and increasing youth entrepreneurship offers many social and economic benefits.

While access to finance is one of the greatest challenges faced by MSMEs across the globe, the barriers imposed to young people can be even higher. The lack of capital, experience, and information, as well as economic and market challenges, can impede youth inclusion in preferred businesses even when there is an expressed willingness to start up a business and create sustainable economic opportunities.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has developed the Youth in Business Programme that aims to provide a holistic approach to addressing the barriers faced by youth entrepreneurs in terms of access to finance and access to know-how.

In cooperation with International Project Consult (IPC), ConsumerCentriX was selected to support the development and roll-out of the Programme in 11 countries of the Western Balkans and Central Asian regions. As such, ConsumerCentriX is undertaking comprehensive market research of youth entrepreneurs gaining an in-depth understanding of their apparent and latent needs, challenges, behavior, most prominent segments, and profiles.

While youth entrepreneurs share important lifecycle features in business and finance across the regions, country-level contexts and financial sector structure require customized solutions. With this in mind, market assessment further expands and looks at the supply side and the potential areas, where youth is likely to be udder-served and could benefit from dedicated financial and non-financial offers.

The market assessment will then be followed by the Programme launch and implementation together with interested financial institutions in the selected countries.

As it stands today, Youth in Business Programme has been successfully launched in Western Balkans.

Providing strategies to enhance the bank’s value proposition to SMEs Since November 2019, the CCX team has been collaborating with BPR Bank Rwanda (formally KCB Rwanda) on enhancing the bank’s capacity to deliver financial and non-financial services (NFS) that meet the needs of its SME customers, under the funding of Argidius Foundation.

The building blocks of the project revolve around:

– Building the capacity of the staff on SME relationship management;
– Strengthening the bank’s NFS strategy and implementation, and;
– Tailoring the SME value proposition for different segments.

Since the launch, the CCX team has assisted the bank in redefining its SME segments, deepening relationship banking, sales, and credit analysis skills of the retail and credit teams through extensive training and integrating NFS solutions within the bank’s business model. CCX’s hands-on experience in SME lending and business development provided fundamental support and know-how in designing customized lending approaches and non-financial services for the target groups. While the capacity building focuses on training, coaching, and mentoring staff of different departments and roles through an “SME Excellence Center”, the NFS work focuses on fostering clients’ financial and business skills in order to help them grow and become more resilient. The CCX team also launched the SME Response Clinic in response to the pandemic’s issues of access to information, business skills training and development, and finance. The online portal provides a centralized source of information and opportunities targeting entrepreneurs in Rwanda.

CCX’s effort to deliver technical assistance to BPR Bank through implementing a holistic banking model and addressing the financial and non-financial needs of SMEs aims to ultimately foster entrepreneurship in Rwanda by providing access to finance, business skills, information, and networking opportunities for SME owners.

In 2022, the CCX team launched the “Guatemala Digital Financial Services Market Assessment” funded by USAID in collaboration with DAI. The project seeks to identify gaps and opportunities in the access to and use of digital financial services (DFS) by low-income and marginalized populations, especially women, in Guatemala. CCX has completed a supply-side landscape assessment and is currently engaged in market research to identify and test a DFS solution to improve formal financial services access and usage among these segments of the population. Stay tuned for findings in early 2023.

The Bellagio Working Group for Digital Financial Inclusion is a working group of top financial regulators from four markets – Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, and Mexico – that seeks to improve access to digital financial services as a way to reach the un- and underbanked with financial products and services. The working group first convened at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in July of 2019 and now meets monthly to engage in peer learning and exchange along with top global digital financial inclusion specialists. In 2022, the working group convened once again in person at the Bellagio Center to discuss “Reimagining Fintech Innovation to Accelerate Digital Financial Inclusion.” The meeting resulted in several important initiatives now underway, including the Fintech Bridge between Egypt and Nigeria – a first of its kind collaboration focusing on cross-country referrals, joint innovation projects, information sharing, and talent development.

As part of a regional initiative to advance women’s financial inclusion, IDB Invest, in partnership with We-Fi, has retained CCX Inclusive Business (CCX IB), to design and implement a Supply Side Sex-Disaggregated Data Survey in 13 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The objective of the survey is to understand financial service providers (FSP) strategies for the women’s market, map their product offerings, both financial and non-financial, for the segment, and understand how they collect and use sex-disaggregated data.  The survey expects to reach over 250 FSPs across the region. The results will serve as the basis for designing and prioritizing the implementation activities of IDB Invest’s regional initiative.